The fuel saving at superspeedways in the Gen 7 era has sparked negative reactions among many NASCAR fans, so changes will take place ahead of the trip to Talladega Superspeedway later this month.
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According to the latest episode of NASCAR's Hauler Talk, stage lengths will change for the race in Alabama. NASCAR EVP and Chief Racing Development Officer John Probst noted that this is one of the multiple changes that they can make to address this situation.
"There's certainly a lot of feedback from the fans that don't always like to see some of the three-wide fuel saving that happens mostly at Talladega and Daytona," Probst said. "And I think that coming out of Daytona, we have been working hand-in-hand with a lot of our race teams, trying to largely break into two categories of things that we could do.
"One being the sporting-related things, like rules around pit stops or stage lengths or things of that nature. The other being in a technical bucket, which would mean car changes, spoiler, power levels, and things of that nature."
NASCAR did not announce the lengths of the stages for the April 26 Cup Series race. The only hint is that the longest stage will happen much earlier in the race.
Last season's spring race featuring Austin Cindric as the winner had a 60-lap stage 1, 60-lap stage 2, and 68-lap stage 3. These lengths remained the same for the playoff race that Chase Briscoe won.
"Generally, how a lot of our speedways were laid out, it was a short stage, a short stage and then a long stage to the end," Probst explained. "Going into Talladega, we're going to flip that."
Probst also noted that the change to the stages would affect the strategy earlier in the race. He said that some teams could try to complete the stage with only one stop while others could try two stops. If enough teams go with the two-stop fuel strategy, it could force other teams to adapt on the fly.
NASCAR has long held the goal of addressing the fuel saving concerns at superspeedways on the schedule. Elton Sawyer, SVP of competition, even said after the 2024 Daytona 500 that NASCAR would look into tactics used by the teams. It just has taken some time to reach this point.
"Ultimately, we want to drop the green flag on the race and they're racing as hard as they can until they drop the checkered flag," Sawyer said during a February 2024 appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio."There's some strategy in between there, and we will definitely take a much deeper dive into this particular situation and the strategy that goes into it."
